A School History of the Great War eBook

Great Britain had for a long time remained outside
the jealousies and combinations of the continental
powers. In fact she had frequently found herself
at odds with France over the rights of the two nations
in Africa, and with Russia over the question of Constantinople
and Russian aggression in Asia. When English
statesmen discovered, however, that the German Empire
was constantly enlarging her navy with a view to challenging
English control of the seas, they felt that it would
be well for Great Britain to seek friendships on the
Continent. Old quarrels with France and Russia
were forgotten. Friendly relations were established,
and Great Britain, France, and Russia entered into
a league of friendship known as the Triple Entente
(1907).

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY.—­1.
Locate the Bosporus, Alsace-Lorraine, Italia Irredenta,
Balkan peninsula, AEgean Sea. 2. Explain
the geographical importance of Constantinople.
How was Russia prevented from taking it in the
Crimean War of 1854 and the Russo-Turkish War of 1877?
3. Show on a map of Europe the countries
in the Triple Alliance and those in the Triple
Entente. Why was each alliance formed?

REFERENCES.—­War Cyclopedia
(C.P.I.); Harding, New Medieval and Modern
History; Hazen, Europe since 1815; and
other European histories. For the treaties
forming the two alliances, see A League of
Nations, Vol. I, No. 4.

CHAPTER VI

THE BALKAN STATES

THE BALKANS.—­As we have learned in Chapter
I, the Balkan states are, with the exception of Montenegro,
the result of a series of revolutions which took place
during the last hundred years. These revolutions
were the result of two causes. First there was
a growing restlessness of the different groups of
people in the Balkan peninsula. This was due not
only to centuries of Turkish misrule, but also to the
influence of the republican movement which developed
in northern and western Europe as a result of the
French Revolution. The second cause of the Balkan
revolutions was the gradual growth among the oppressed
races of the feeling that they would better their
condition by throwing off the despotic Turkish rule
and by organizing each separate race into a separate
nation. Thus it was that the revolutions brought
into existence a group of small states, each populated
chiefly by one of the races inhabiting the Balkans.

[Illustration: THE BALKAN STATES 1913]

RACES IN THE BALKANS.—­There are more races
represented in the Balkans than in any similar sized
territory in Europe. Most of the Balkan states
lie along what was the northeastern fringe of the Roman
Empire. So we find inhabiting them not only ancient
races like the Greeks and Albanians, but also descendants
of Roman colonists like the Roumanians, and other
racial groups like the Serbs and Bulgars, which represent
the survivals of the barbarian invasions of the Middle